Peter Adkins

Lecturer in Modernist Literature

  • English Literature
  • School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures

Contact details

Address

Street

Room 3.04
21 Buccleuch Place

City
Edinburgh
Post code
EH8 9LD

City
Post code

Biography

Background

I am Lecturer in Modernist Literature and the current programme director for the MSc in Literature and Modernity.

I completed my PhD on modernism and the Anthropocene at the University of Kent in 2019. I joined the University of Edinburgh as an Early Career Teaching and Research Fellow in 2021, becoming a permanent member of staff in 2024. 

I am Treasurer of the Scottish Network of Modernist Studies and an active member of several learned societies.

Qualifications

PhD, English, University of Kent (2019)

Responsibilities & affiliations

British Association for Modernist Studies

Scottish Network of Modernist Studies

Digestive Modernisms

Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Network

Kent Animal Humanities Network

International Virginia Woolf Society

Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain

Undergraduate teaching

2024/25:

Global Modernisms: Inter/National Responses to Modernity

Postgraduate teaching

2024/25:

Modernist Aesthetics (course organiser only)

Late Modernism and Beyond

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Areas of interest for supervision

I welcome PhD project proposals in the areas of modernism and modern literature, ecocriticism, animal studies, anthropocene studies, vegan studies and posthumanism. 

Research summary

  • Modernism
  • Ecocriticism
  • Anthropocene Studies
  • Energy Humanities
  • Animal Studies

I am particularly interested in the following writers:

  • Djuna Barnes
  • Virginia Woolf
  • James Joyce
  • Vita Sackville-West

Current research interests

My primary research interests lie in modernist and modern literature, ecocriticism and animal studies. My first monograph, The Modernist Anthropocene (2022), examines how modernist writers forged new and innovative ways of responding to rapidly changing planetary conditions and emergent ideas about nonhuman life, environmental change and the human species. This book was shortlisted for the British Society for Literature and Science's annual book prize and reviewed in major academic journals. I am currently working on a monograph that explores how Virginia Woolf's fiction and essays responded to intensification in resource use, from fossil fuels to food to animals, and how her writing might offer a resource to think with today. Work from this project has already been published in "Virginia Woolf and the Anthropocene" (2024) and accepted for publication in "The Routledge Handbook to Virginia Woolf" (forthcoming). I am also working on a broader project looking at how early twentieth century British literature bears the impression of the energy transition, with writers devising new narrative structures to respond to the material, social and political implications of oil. As part of this research, I organised a symposium and online seminar series with Dr Malcolm Cook at the University of Southampton exploring the cultural history of BP. I'm also very interested in the relationship between humans and other animals, particularly the animals we raise for food.  In 2022, I launched the Digestive Modernisms research network with Dr Marie Allitt, which aims to bring together researchers interested in food, eating and digestion within modernist culture.

Invited speaker

‘Narrating Oil: Modernism, Petroleum and Ambivalence’, Teesside University, 4 June 2024.

‘Lawns, Books and Bombs: A Response to Claire Colebrook’, Virginia Woolf and Ecology: The 32nd Annual International Virginia Woolf Conference, Florida Gulf State University, 8 June 2023.

‘Reading the Modernist Anthropocene’, University of Tartu, 16 September 2022.

‘Djuna Barnes’s Beastly Anthropocene’, Writing Animals Symposium, University of Kent, 3 March 2017.

Organiser

Beckett's Relationships: The Tenth Annual Conference on Samuel Beckett, University of Edinburgh, June 2025

Crude Representations: BP and the Cultural Imagination of Oil, University of Edinburgh / University of Southampton, January 2025

Beastly Modernisms, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, September 2019

Virginia Woolf, Europe and Peace: The 28th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woof, University of Kent, Canterbury, June 2018

Papers delivered

'Animal, Coal, Oil: Uneven Energy and Extraction in The Voyage Out,' Virginia Woolf and Dissidence, 34th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, 5-8 July 2025, University of Sussex

‘Vita Sackville-West, British Modernism and the Anglo-Persian oilfields’, Petrocultures 2024, University of Southern California, 15-18 May 2024

‘Crude Yet Refined: Finding the Oil in Woolf's Essays’, Virginia Woolf and Ecology: 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Florida Gulf Coast University

‘An English Highway Straight Into Hell: The Oil in British Modernism’, The Subterranean Anthropocene: The British Society for Literature and Science Winter Symposium 2022, Kings College London and University of Bristol, 12 November 2022

'Tracing Modernism's Vegetarian Influencers', Hopeful Modernisms: British Association for Modernist Studies International Conference 2022, University of Bristol, 23-25 June 2022.

'Reading Woolf in the Anthropocene' Virginia Woolf and Ethics: 31st Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Lamar University, Texas, 9-12 June 2022.

‘Siberian Mammoths, Rice Pudding and Iraqi Oil Fields: ‘The London Scene’ and the Capitalocene’ 30th Annual International conference on Virginia Woolf, University of South Dakota, 10-13 June 2021.

‘Consciousness and Materiality: Reading Joyce in the Noosphere’ British Society for Science and Literature Annual Conference 2020, University of Sheffield, 15-17 April 2020. 

‘Joyce, Molly and the Revenge of Gea-Tellus.’ British Association of Modernist Studies International Conference 2019, Kings College London, 20-22 June 2019.

‘Fourwalkers, Taildanglers, Headhangers: Labouring animals and animal labour in James Joyce’s Ulysses.’ Zurich James Joyce Centre Workshop 2018, Zurich James Joyce Center, 6-11 August 2018.

‘Writing the Anthropocene: Woolf, Braidotti and Posthumanist Feminism in the time of Climate Change’ at 28th Annual International conference on Virginia Woolf, University of Kent, 21-24 June 2018.

‘Modernist Anthropocene Aesthetics’ at Aesthetics in the Anthropocene, University of Sussex, 10-11 April 2018.

‘Unclean Beasts: Reading Djuna Barnes in the era of Anthropocene Studies’ at New Work in Modernist Studies 2017, University of Leeds, 15 December 2017.

‘Green, Queer, Entangled: The Use of “Nature” in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Vita Sackville-West’s The Land’ at 27th Annual International conference on Virginia Woolf, University of Reading, 29th June – 2nd July 2017.

‘The Eyes of Dead Animals: Nineteenth Century Meat Production in James Joyce’s Ulysses’ at Consuming Animals, University of York, 17-18th March 2017.

‘Nature’s Queer Tricks: Historicizing the Anthropocene with Virginia Woolf’ at MLA Convention 2017, Philadelphia, 5-8 January 2017.

‘The Ineluctable Thereness of the Anthropocene: Joyce, Modernism and Ecology’ at ASLE-UKI Postgraduate Conference 2016, University of Lincoln, 31st August – 2nd September 2016.

‘How Do Contemporary Posthuman Readings of Phenomenology Challenge Longstanding Ideas of a Recognisably “Human” Subject?’ at Cross-Disciplinary Phenomenology: A Readiness for the Questionable, University of Kent, 24th June 2016

‘Challenging Joyce: The Claim of the Nonhuman in Ulysses and Elizabeth Costello’ at XXV International James Joyce Symposium, University of London, 13-18 June 2016.

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